SCUC ISD’s bond would replace one school and renovate...

1of 5The proposal calls for the Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City school district’s Rose Garden Elementary to be replaced and expanded.Photo: John Davenport /San Antonio Express-News

2of 5Under the Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District’s $137 million bond issue, Rose Garden Elementary’s capacity would increase from almost 500 students to almost 1,000.Photo: Photos by John Davenport /San Antonio Express-News

3of 5Rose Garden would move from Universal City to Schertz under the bond proposal.Photo: John Davenport /San Antonio Express-News

4of 5Rose Garden Elementary School in the Schertz-Cibolo Universal City Independent School District was built in the early 1960s. Voters there will have the option to rebuild or relocate the school as part of a $137 million bond issue. The school has exceeded its capacity of 484 students.Photo: John Davenport, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

5of 5Rose Garden Elementary School in the Schertz-Cibolo Universal City Independent School District was built in the early 1960s. Voters there will have the option to rebuild or relocate the school as part of a $137 million bond issue. The school has exceeded its capacity of 484 students. This is the school's library.Photo: John Davenport, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

Citing fast growth and a need for equity between Clemens and Steele high schools, Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District will ask voters Nov. 8 to decide on a $137 million bond proposal.

The bond issue would pay for the replacement and expansion of Rose Garden Elementary School; renovations and expansions at Clemens; heating, ventilation and air-conditioning replacements at Wilder and Jordan intermediate schools and Watts Elementary; technology infrastructure and additional buses.

“It’s all driven by student growth,” Superintendent Greg Gibson said.

The bond proposal takes up one ballot question. It is not projected to increase the school district’s tax rate because property values in the area are rising and the district is refinancing existing debt, Gibson said.

Under the proposal, Rose Garden Elementary would move from its current location in Universal City to Schertz, near Corbett Junior High. The replacement school’s design would be similar to Cibolo Valley Elementary, which opened last year. Rose Garden’s capacity would increase from almost 500 students to almost 1,000.

Rose Garden was built in the early 1960s in an older neighborhood of Universal City where fewer children live now, said Gary Inmon, board president. The new school would be built in an area exploding with new houses, on FM 1518, he said.

The new school would technically fall in the boundaries of Watts Elementary, so the district would have to rezone, Gibson said. The boundaries would be set next year, and the new school would open in 2018, at a cost of $38 million.

The bond proposal includes $72 million for upgrades at Clemens and expansions that would increase its capacity from more than 2,200 to 3,300. Clemens had nearly 2,600 students in October 2015; Steele had about 2,200.

“The reality is that when our third high school comes online, we’ll have 6,000 high school students,” Gibson said.

Built in 1967, some of Clemens’ facilities compare poorly with Steele, which opened in 2005. Steele, for example, has a premier auditorium that attracts performances from military bands and the symphony, Inmon said. Clemens’ auditorium hasn’t changed much since the school was built. If the bond issue is approved, Clemens’ auditorium would be torn down and replaced with classrooms, while a new auditorium would be built elsewhere on campus, Inmon said.

“We’ve always tried to spread the wealth around,” Inmon said. “A lot of folks are moving to that side of town, too, so it’s not like they’re all moving to Steele. In fact, Clemens’ attendance has gotten larger than Steele’s.”

To minimize student displacement during construction, Clemens’ renovations would take about four years, Gibson said.

The district is among the fastest-growing school districts in the Bexar County area. Most of the district is in Guadalupe County. It includes Schertz, Cibolo and parts of Selma, Converse, St. Hedwig and Universal City.

Now exceeding 15,000 students, the district adds about 500 more each year, Gibson said. To keep up, the district is on a three-year cycle of bond elections. It maintains a 10-year facilities plan, which predicts a new junior high school in 2023, a new elementary school in 2024, a new intermediate school in 2025 and a new high school in 2026.

Community forums on the bond proposal will be held Oct. 17 at Rose Garden, Oct. 24 at Steele and Oct. 25 at Clemens. All meetings begin at 6 p.m.

Alia Malik is an education reporter for the San Antonio Express-News. She covers several local school districts, community colleges and education trends. Before joining the Express-News in 2013, she worked for a daily newspaper in Connecticut, where she covered the city of Naugatuck and some of the fallout from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

The daughter of a New Englander and a Bangladeshi immigrant, Alia grew up in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and graduated from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. A former Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador, she speaks and writes fluently in Spanish.